


The Flame Still Burns, the Rain Still Falls

by karrenia_rune



Category: Only the Good Die Young-Billy Joel
Genre: Female Anti-Hero, Fic or Treat Meme, Gen, Inspired by Music, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 16:11:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11039673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune





	The Flame Still Burns, the Rain Still Falls

Disclaimer: the song is by Billy Joel, I own nothing except the words of the story. Written for litra's request in the 2017 Juke Box Exchange"

"The Flame Still burns (the Rain Still Falls) 

It felt so right that it should have been against the law. 

Frank had first met her when he'd been a lanky, awkward teenage nerd smart enough to almost ace all of his classes; that is if he had been motivated enough to actually attend them. That same intelligence did not equate to being smart enough to get out of the trouble that seemed to have an uncanny knack for landing squarely in his lap.

Sometimes Frank thought it was a case that the powers that be had a personal grudge against him.

That was until Victoria. "Hell, she could always chivvy me out of the blues whenever she noticed that I had begun to brood." Frank laughed, but it was more of a short bark of sound than a true laugh. "I think that's what I loved the most about her. Whenever the rain began to pour down, whenever the rain began to shine, she also found that silver lining. Not that you would think that she was always on the sunny side or refused to see that world around us did not have a dark underbelly; no it was that we were meant to be together. I don't know exactly what I brought to this relationship, but I maybe we grounded each other. If that does not sound completely insane? Does it sound insane? She was unlike anyone he had ever met before, smart, beautiful, and irrepressible. She took life as it came, and her zest for life was uncanny. 

That may have been the fact that Victoria was smart, scary smart, the kind of smart that also made the other kids in school just a bit intimidated by her. Victoria had mentioned one lazy, summer afternoon sitting on the porch of their fancy house in some gated community that Frank could no longer remember the name of; that he was her step-father, that he loved his money and his bank account more than he could have loved her or her mother.

Frank wondered what that must have been like and mumbled something societal appropriate, and they'd drunk craft beer and made love. If they'd been worried about the fallout from the authorities, such as her father, or the church elders, or hell, the cops; well it hardly mattered, right?

Victoria declared that if this was the only life the fates or God or whomever she wanted to live it like James Dean had once said: Live Hard, Play Hard, Die Young and leave behind a good-looking corpse.  
Frank had not thought to question at the time what Victoria had meant by that. Hell; he'd thought that he might as well be her Clyde to her Bonnie.

The next thing he knew they were barreling down the freeway in a cherry red convertible with the top down, of course with the wind in their hair, and the radio on.

They'd gone to the sea-shore, gone clubbing, and if she sometimes disappeared at times with no explanation or where or she was meeting, or when she'd be back; he had never thought to question it. Perhaps he should have, but what the hell did a couple of crazy kids know about fate?

Sometimes; when she came back she wore a look that would not have been out of place on the proverbial cat that ate the canary. Sometimes she would sport a shiner; a big black circle around her brown eyes that made the whites even more pronounced.

Later on, when they'd been dating for sometime Victoria would cover the black-eyes and the scrapes and bruises with make-up. Sometimes she decided to change-up her look by dying her hair a pastel green and Frank had asked her point blank if this was her way of rebelling against societal mores, or just her Old Man, or what the hell have you?

At times, Frank demanded to know what had happened and if there was anything he could do to help; she'd take him along and she would drag him along to what the Projects and she would step in.< The weird thing of it all was the inevitable fallout from these 'extra-curricular activities; like trying to avoid the police, or the leaders of the gangs, or any other things that he could not imagine never seemed to directly affect either of them while they were together. How the hell did she manage to do that? 

It was more than a bit of a blur whether or not her intention was to start the fights or stop them. We might even have been hanging out with a dangerous crowd. We weren't too pretty and we weren't too proud, but that's okay."

To this day, Frank though, that Victoria had been one of those proverbial forces of nature, undaunted, unpredictable; he and everyone else who had ever been fortunate enough to have fallen into her orbit had just been tugged along in her wake.

Not, it was that she had ever been unaware of the effect that she had had on people, or that she simply took it for granted; although some might say that there were times when that was probably had been the case.  
It was more, more, that she was born too late, or too soon, that sometime, the fates would call her back to them and she would go; because she couldn't resist the lure of another adventure.

"Should have known she would out-grow me," Frank muttered under his breath/ She outgrows everybody eventually. Damn, Damn, and for could measure, Damn. I think I need a stiff drink, maybe more than one."  
As he went over to the mini-fridge and opened it, he could not help but wonder where Victoria was now, if she was still getting into and out of as much trouble as she ever had.

Perhaps even time would eventually catch up to her and she would settle down somewhere, or maybe or maybe, he'd finally her of something she couldn't handle and that he would read in the headlines of some far away city's morning paper about the beautiful and dauntless Victoria Roberts who had tragically died/been killed; taken away too young. "Hey, Virgina, sooner or later it comes down to fate."


End file.
